Loneliness Destroys Physical Health From The Inside Out

Forbes:

Loneliness can increase the risk of premature death in older adults by 14%, claims a major new study supported by the National Institutes of Health. The results expand a growing understanding of the potential for loneliness to damage physical health along with psychological health.

What the research team found is that perceived social isolation—the “feeling of loneliness”—was strongly linked to two critical physiological responses in a group of 141 older adults: compromised immune systems and increased cellular inflammation. Both outcomes are thought to hinge on how loneliness affects the expression of genes through a phenomenon the researchers call “conserved transcriptional response to adversity,” or CTRA.

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The research team included noted University of Chicago loneliness researcher John Cacioppo, who also published research earlier this year on the brain differences between lonely and non-lonely people. In that study, Cacioppo found that the brains of lonely people display a “hyper-vigilance” to perceived social threats. Certain socially negative words (like “alone,” “solitary,” and “sad”) triggered responses in the lonely participants’ brains significantly more pronounced than responses from non-lonely participants’ brains, suggesting a rapid shift into self-preservation mode in the lonely brain.

Read the whole story: Forbes